Ever since the students in Kashmir started to make their voices heard through protests, Government and Hurriyat have literally entered into a ‘Tug Of War’. It is not just about the either side winning but it is about the loop in the rope which is squeezing the student community inside it. As a student I also find myself held inside this loop of the rope which is being dragged by the Government and Hurriyat. In pursuit of their political victory, the both sides are making it sure that the student community gets firmly squeezed within this loop, intentionally or unintentionally.
In any conflict the parties tend to pursue incompatible goals, and the Government and Hurriyat are not an exception here. One party want the student community to go for protests and in such a condition the classwork has to remain suspended, the other side being apprehensive about the protests want that the students should not go for it which inevitably leads to suspension of classwork. Whether students hold protests or they don’t over something condemnable; it does not lessen or enhance the gravity of a wrongdoing, either way. I may sound fretful to many people but I am very certain that there are many people of my ilk who I choose to represent through this write-up.
Last year in the month of September when Kashmir was at the crossroads, I happened to meet a middle aged man at a Friday congressional prayer who told me a very hurtful tale about how illetrate people like him are looked down in the society he said that “whenever I try to make an opinion about Kashmir, I am always silenced by the educated people who tell me that you are incapable of understanding the Kashmir problem,” he said adding that “at a time when the haves of my society were studying in India and elsewhere, the less fortunate got stuck in the violence in Kashmir.
We have made the protests staple of Kashmir problem and this approach is satisfying us emotionally, but at the same time it sets back our other important aspirations.
It hurts me when people blame me for what I have become and not the circumstances. I will not let the same thing happen to my children.” This lived experience of a common Kashmiri gives answers and raises questions with regard to the present situation of education in Kashmir.
Every one of us cannot afford to study outside the state, there are very few fortunate people who manage to get scholarships and fellowships and no one has a problem with them. Nobody questions those who are studying in the universities of other states or foreign universities but if a person like me will show a concern about his educational future, it will be contested by the people who are either at the peak of their career or are studying outside the state and they will make me sound like I don’t care about the people of Kashmir.
The student protests are being used as a means of cover to hide hollow and failed leadership in Kashmir. If this is not a case then why try same approaches and expect different results. We have made the protests staple of Kashmir problem and this approach is satisfying us emotionally, but at the same time it sets back our other important aspirations.
Why are those at the helm of educational affairs silent over this routine suspension of class work? Are they more fundamental about their own survival than the sufferings and loss of the student community? If a call for protest could provide the students an opportunity to contribute, so could a call for education.
(The author is contributing exclusively for the edit page of “Kashmir Horizon”. The views are his personal)
